1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for facilitating assessment of a coursework answer and moderating the assessment.
2. Description of the Related Art
Assessment of a coursework answer, such as homework or end of unit assessment work, has traditionally been carried out on paper. A coursework question would be given to the student. A coursework answer would be submitted by the student on paper. An assessor would assess the work and express this assessment by writing on the work in ink, traditionally red ink, indicating marks awarded and providing comments relating to how well the student has met the objectives of the coursework. Where a mark is awarded the assessor will ordinarily indicate this with a tick or a number associated with the number of marks warranted. The number of ticks or marks will be summed to give an overall mark for the coursework answer. The overall mark can then be compared to a chart to give an overall grade or compared to the other students' overall marks to give an overall grade.
A problem associated with this traditional method is that the coursework is inherently modified by the assessment, in that the coursework will have red ink written over much of the coursework; and errors are commonly made in the addition of the ticks or numbers in marking.
The coursework may be assessed by more than one assessor. This is particularly important for coursework which leads to a nationally recognised qualification, where the marking has to be provably unbiased, accurate and fully representative of the students' coursework answer. In this case, the coursework answer is photocopied to produce a copy and the further assessor has the copy of the coursework answer which is assessed independently. The overall mark awarded by the assessor is compared to the mark awarded by the further assessor. Inter alia, if there is a large variation between these marks, the coursework with the assessments of the assessor and further assessor are sent to a moderator. The moderator will review the marks awarded by each of the assessors to moderate the assessments to provide a moderated mark. The moderator may also review a coursework answer which has been marked consistently by the assessor and further assessor(s) to check on the quality of the assessor and further assessor's assessments.
A problem with this traditional method of assessment is that photocopying coursework is time consuming, expensive and does not necessarily fully reflect the original coursework answer, particularly, but not exclusively, if the coursework involves multimedia digital video, photo and sound files.
Another problem with this traditional method of moderating the assessment is that it is difficult and time consuming, in that: errors are commonly made in the addition of the ticks or numbers; and it is often difficult to find evidence for the mark awarded.
A further problem is sharing the assessment for student review. The assessor may not be able to express his assessment clearly due to the lack of space on the coursework or due to fear of obscuring part of the original work. Thus the student may not fully appreciate the reason for the assessor's mark.
A further problem is sharing the assessment for student to student review (peer to peer review).